Brooks
Yes, it was a good column. I wonder what would happen if Roe was overturned now. A continent wide explosion, I guess. The column is getting a lot of mention. Here is Ann Althouse:
Let's roll back 30 years and start over.
David Brooks on Roe v. Wade: Things would have worked out better for liberals if the Supreme Court had not made abortion into a right but had allowed the issue to work its way out in the democratic arena.The only way out of our nasty politics, he thinks, is to overrule Roe v. Wade.
But it's not possible to redo the last 30 years. We already are where we are, and those who think abortion should be legal have spent these decades -- or their whole lives -- thinking abortion was not only legal but a constitutional right. To take that right away now would not give us a chance to have the democratic debate we never had. It would be a wholly different experience of taking away a right, after the bitter politics had built to the level where the side opposed to the right has finally gotten its way, after we have already become polarized. What makes you think that won't be insanely bitter?
True, it will be democratic -- though the pro-abortion-rights side won't give up on fighting in the courts -- but it won't be the same democratic debate we might have had back in the early 1970s. Ironically, if, after all these years, social conservatives finally gain a majority on the Supreme Court that is willing to overturn the precedent, it will activate political liberals and libertarians. And one thing they will want is their majority back on the Supreme Court.
I think David Brooks, like most of those who push for radical change, is indulging himself, painting a rosy picture of life post-change. |
